Menu

WHY A HARPER MAJORITY

WHY A HARPER MAJORITY MUST BE STOPPED: QUÉBEC, THE KEYSTONE OF CONFEDERATION, IS BEING MARGINALIZED.

Stephen Harper seems to be well-ensconced in Ottawa, governing what’s left of our country with a sort of Stalinesque ‘cult of personality’ dictatorship-like iron fisted style of leadership, albeit lacking the ‘personality’ part, but heavy on the ‘cult’ side of things.

He seems content to sit there and do nothing of great substance, the content of his Throne Speeches getting gutted sometimes only hours after being announced.

He definitely has a social-conservative agenda that he wants to push, focused, he says, on families, with a non-denominational thrust towards traditional family values, something many immigrant families still believe in. This is why one of his ministers is now reaching out to that constituency.

What worries me, though, are Mr. Harper’s Reform Party roots, which are quite clearly showing through his rhetoric. Like Preston Manning, the founder of the Reform Party before him, Harper, being a westerner whose constituents have for over a century felt that Québec and Ontario have had too much power in Confederation, wants to do everything within his power to put central Canada, and especially, the province of Québec, in its place.

Québec, being the keystone, or cradle of Confederation, has traditionally been the swing vote province. How Québecers voted in federal elections traditionally determined the outcome of the governing party, whether it was Liberal or Conservative, or otherwise.

There was always an unspoken, and sometimes outspoken, understanding that our province needed to be included in any governing arrangement for our country to function, seeing that the French-speaking people of this country were the original European inhabitants of Canada. Also, in light of the particularly special circumstances under which we were brought into the British realm, it was always felt that our province should have a say around the table in any process of decision-making, so as to give us a sense of empowerment in the edification of this new entity called Canada.

This fact seems to be completely lost on Mr. Harper, and he seems to be stooping to the most rank form of petty regionalist fear-mongering ever seen since Riel got himself hoisted up at some God-forsaken place on the prairies called ‘Pile ‘o Bones’ Saskatchewan, which eventually became Regina, and which since such time hasn’t improved a whole heck of a lot in aesthetic value (believe me, I’ve been there).

Mr. Harper seems Hell-bent on fulfilling the old Reform Party pledge to reduce Québec’s weight and influence in Confederation. This is a fatal error, because it only opens up a wider breech for such nationalist-secessionists such as the Bloc Québécois, to near-permanently occupy the playing field at the federal level, with their mantra of ‘get the federal state out of Québec, permanently’.
Mr. Harper therefore continues to sit in Ottawa, apparently ‘doing nothing’, when in fact he’s using the inertia caused by this minority Parliament, and the Opposition’s fear of opposing him, (for fear of having to fight an election, which the Liberals fear they will lose big), to radically restructure, or should I say ‘destructure’ what precious little is left of our country.

Canada was founded upon the notion of the Crown being vigorously involved in all aspects of the building up of this country’s economic, social, cultural, and moral fabric. To divest ourselves of such crucial instruments and levers of power so as to better pit one regional fiefdom against another, borders on an act of treacherous treason, and should be vigorously countered at every turn by those who truly love this country.

Our province is much too important to be left out in the cold by such Machiavellian machinations. We deserve better than Stephen Harper, and we certainly deserve better than Gilles Duceppe and his merry band of ‘bloquistes’, whose main goal in life seems to be to ‘block’ everything from going forward.

The question is: Is King Michael of Iggy up to the task of leading us out of the wilderness and into a new and better age of Confederation, where Québec is once again at the table? The jury is still out on that one.

In the meantime, Stephen Harper seems quite happy to remain ensconced in Ottawa ‘doing nothing’. As the old saying goes: ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee’. (That means Canada, by the way.)